The Heroism of Being Like God

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/110117.cfm
Revelation 7:2-4, 9:14
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12

What does it mean to be like God? What does that look like?

For instance, to physically grab someone by their arms and jacket and fling them behind you seems always a very bad way to communicate and interact. If a bus, however, or a train, or a football player running out of bounds will soon crash into a person within your reach then such activity, though wholly uncomfortable and violent, immediately becomes appropriate. In fact, it is God-like.

In an instant, we who remove a person from danger reach and step into another level of our role as an essential being of the physical and spiritual realms. It is the heroic act of extraordinary authority. We claim control over the twists and turns of danger on the loose. 

Heroism requires interference in time and space. But, is it holiness or hubris? Is it purity of heart or simply ego on parade that allows us to insert our will and power into life? Who are we to disrupt nature? Do we have the right to disturb the unavoidable wreck of two oncoming forces?

"Of course we do!" most would say. But why? What rule of law or moral requirement places a person in the position to save another? I say we emulate someone else. What about this someone else substantiates our interference in the train wrecks and course corrections of collisions? 

Those who object to holiness and active participation with God as if we were gods ourselves, emulating our creator, see rogue hubris, not holiness, in the heroics of exercised authority. If there is no God whose image has been likened to us, then holiness is measured against what? Heroics, without an all-powerful God to prompt our behavior, appears odd and irrational. The more violent the heroine and hero, the more they seem like bullies and interlopers, angry souls frustrated at the randomness of life.

And yet, we do have a creator. We know this creator God because he has revealed himself to us. The objectors to a creator God who images us to heroics are misguided.

Everyone can remember the moments of both successful, and unsuccessful, attempts to interfere in events and save another person. We also remember the moments where we failed to act altogether. "If only," we murmur. We either propel ourselves into these moments, or we freeze. This thing that insists upon our engagement, that wells up guilt in our failed fear, is not a malformed conscience. It is the one who draws us to be like him calling to us to be engaged. We cry over our hesitancy in the moments where God urged us to act. 

The fortunate reality is that only God can heal that disappointment we have in ourselves. He does so by offering us countless more opportunities, filling us with grace to be like him. It is not just adrenaline that moves us to act. It is our God-like urgency sparking our adrenaline.

If heroism as holiness transforms our person beyond a temporary adrenaline rush, then what transformation takes place in us? I believe when we engage in creation as a participant with the creator we adopt his character. We revel in his life-giving grace. We step in a very real way into eternity. 

In every instant of our lives we can act as stewards of the highest order. There are more non-violent than violent heroic moments because God’s character is fully complicated, so as to be complete. He addresses the whole range of life, not just the crisis. God engages us as he wants us to be all day long. Each of the sequential short moments in our life travel forward into holiness as we move heroically through our day. 

The lifeblood of God erupts and flows and fills everyone around us. Our fellowship of travelers, marching toward eternity, need to be saved from collisions of all sorts. They need to be comforted, mourned, loved, discipled, hailed, and held. Every potential engagement that God offers to us seals us together and gathers us to him. In essence, each of these engagements involves heroism. We interfere in nefarious outcomes as we reject the inevitability of harm, danger and decay.

Paramedics, firemen, nurses, and soldiers explain their heroism in the same way. They describe entering a holy place where they transcend a mere physical experience into a spiritual awakening. We, like them, are prompted to take hold of every single moment. We resist the seeming inevitable collisions with the insistence that another person should not be damaged. We interfere with both a haste and purpose that resembles the authority and intervention set aside for gods and superheroes. 

How, though, do we know to do it? Some would suggest that experience and upbringing supply the necessary awareness and motivation. Practice at rescue and the ability to abandon surface protocols must also apply, say others. That's fine but entirely incomplete. Calculation cannot explain every element of the heroic rescuer's act, simply because this event takes place in sub-seconds.

Over-thinking and judicious assessment will probably fail such a rescue. The immediacy of heroism requires human engagement at many levels. And, right now. RIGHT NOW! A person who fulfills such a need comes to the train station already committed to act in such a way. They see a lady begin to faint and fall forward onto the tracks, and they snag her clothing or body with abandon and snatch her from death.

Such a rescue involves intimacy not allowed, but quite necessary. This intimacy is already visible in a young family or a married couple. A mother or father exhibit 24-hour tuned-in antennae for their children, and for each other. Their intimate relationships allow and expect an immediacy where hurried reactions take place many times a day.

Such is how I imagine John's notion of purity. We are God's children now, and what we shall be has not yet been revealed, he writes. What we do know, he says, is that we shall be like him. That will be possible because we will see God as he really is. The wait and expectation for this new being with God transforms us into purity. 

Heroism in tragic consequences represents just one element of being like God. The Gospel reading from Matthew 5:1 today provides a full list of elemental God-like behavior that transforms us into divine beings. 

Eventually, we will see God as he really is, and I believe the beatitudes offer a pallet of colors that each of us can draw upon to paint a holy life. The beatitudes project heroism’s spirit, and its consequence.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn,

for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,

for they will inherit the land.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they will be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful,

for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the clean of heart,

for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,

for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you

and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.

Rejoice and be glad,

for your reward will be great in heaven."